Timeline of IRS scandal

April 19, 2010 — A “Sensitive Case Report” on the targeted tea party groups is shared with Lerner. This is the first time a top IRS official is given details about the spike in tea party applications.

June and July 2011 — Lerner is briefed that employees are using search terms such as “tea party,” “patriots,” “9/12 Project,” “government spending,” “government debt,” “taxes” and “make America a better place to live” to flag applications. Lerner, after learning about the search terms, tells the Cincinnati office to revise its guidelines for flagging applications. The guidance is expanded to include “organizations involved with political, lobbying, or advocacy for exemption under 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4).”

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Also in June, Lerner’s hard drive crashes, erasing two years worth of emails investigators deem vital to their probes.

December 2011 — House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee staffers meet with Lerner, but she doesn’t mention the targeting program.

January 2012 — Cincinnati employees change their search terms again — without telling management. This time, the search terms aren’t as specific as “tea party” and “9/12,” but they still focus on political positions such as “limiting/expanding government” and “social economic reform/movement.” Upon discovering the change, Lerner institutes new rules requiring all changes to the search term criteria be approved by management.

March 2012 — Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa expresses concern to the IRS inspector general that tea party groups are being unfairly targeted by the agency. Doug Shulman, IRS commissioner when the targeting program got underway, vehemently denies to lawmakers in March 2012 that the agency was targeting conservative groups. He is briefed two months later but never follows up with lawmakers.

June and July 2012 — Issa officially requests that the inspector general audit the IRS to see how employees are processing applications for nonprofit groups. IRS Inspector General J. Russell George writes a letter to Issa confirming an audit is underway.

November 2012 — Shulman leaves his post atop the IRS due to term limits. Steve Miller becomes acting IRS commissioner.

March 2013 — Treasury officials are told of the IRS inspector general audit’s initial findings and are provided with an early draft report.

May 2013 — The scandal erupts when, at the request of Miller, Lerner responds to a planted question by apologizing for disparate treatment at an American Bar Association meeting in Washington.

“That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect; it was insensitive, and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review,” Lerner says on May 10.

Days later, the inspector general releases the findings, congressional hearings begin and the FBI starts a probe.

Miller steps down at the White House’s request on May 15.

On May 22, Lerner goes before the House Oversight Committee and declares her innocence before invoking her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination and refuses to answer questions from lawmakers. She is placed on administrative leave the following day.

Fall 2013-Spring 2014: Republicans continue to release Lerner emails showing she allegedly leaned left and may have taken a special interest in Crossroads GPS.

May 2014: The House votes to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress.

June 2014: The IRS tells Congress that it “has determined that Ms. Lerner’s computer crashed in mid-2011” and that some of her emails were lost, preventing the IRS from handing the emails over to the panels investigating her.

July 2014: A federal judge orders the IRS to explain under oath how it lost emails connected to Lerner. The Justice Department tells lawmakers it is investigating the circumstances surrounding the lost emails.

Sept. 5, 2014: Sen. Carl Levin, who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, releases a 224-page report suggesting that the IRS improperly treated both liberal and conservative groups applying for tax exemptions while criticizing the May 2013 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration for focusing only on the scrutiny given to tea party groups.